I surprised myself with this one. I’ve seen few versions of the Chimera that I’ve liked. The standard 3 headed one never worked for me. And then I came up with a version that I liked. It was just there. Isn’t the imagination wonderful?
Author Archives: skook
Nightgaunt
Another critter from Lovecraft.
Cuddly Frogfishpeople
A little more Lovecraftian sketching. The fishfrog thing in the upper right is a deep one. In the lower right is a deep one / human hybrid in the process of transforming.
The middle thing is some sort of fire creature and the fellow in the bottom left is Lone Crow. (The profile in the top left is no one specific.)
Consorting with the Old Ones
These to sketches are tangentially related to the Flash animation series project. The old man version of H.P. Lovecraft was to be a minor character in one of the series. The series was to be set in an alternate America where creatures of myth and magic were part of everyday life. (Yeah I know, real original.) Lovecraft was to be head of the police resources and evidence archives.
The Wilbur Whately portrait was done for the fun of it.
And a Little More Bullfrog
As you can see I kept working on the design for Bullfrog’s costume. I didn’t mind if the costume was a little silly (the series was to be a comedy after all) but I didn’t want it to look too dumb or too stupid. (I’m not really a fan of stupid comedy. I’ll admit to laughing at it but just because I laugh at it doesn’t mean I like it.)
And More Bullfrog
Still more Bullfrog sketches. The ugly guy with the fly wings in Killer Fly, another villainous type who only existed as a sketch. No character had really been invented for the character yet.
More Bullfrog
Another sketch of Chef Sinister, the evil French chef. A headshot of Auntie Beehive who probably controlled hordes of bees. I’m pretty sure that the character’s name came first, then the sketch and I would have figured out what to do with her if we’d gotten to the proposal stage.
Bullfrog / Licking Toads
These sketches are for Bullfrog (or maybe Licking Toads, I forget exactly which) a series that I’m pretty sure never made it to the actual proposal stage. It was to be about a young woman who inherits her uncle’s superhero costume and powers. The uncle went by the name Bullfrog and he gained his froggy superpowers by licking the dried mummies of some unknown breed of toad.
The first adversary our heroine was to face was an insane French chef with an arsenal of food and cooking utensil based weapons.
Evolving Max
Max begins to look more like himself.
(This post imported from blogger. Was originally a stray draft.)
More Simplicity
Another page of stripped down cartooning. I was concentrating on doing simple character designs in order to animate them in Flash. Back in 1999 Nizzibet had been contacted by someone she knew who was working with an internet startup company. The company wanted to create a number of short flash cartoon series to be posted on the web. The plan was to generate a fanbase for each series inexpensively via the web and then sell/license the series to movie & television production companies. Nizzibet’s friend asked her (and therefore me and the rest of the Labor of Love studio) to pitch some series ideas to the company. The proposals didn’t have to come with illustrations attached – we weren’t going to be doing the animation – but I have a hard time writing for a visual medium without giving myself something visual to work with so I did sketches for each series as part of our idea generating process.
I don’t remember which (if any) series these sketches might have been for. It’s obviously one that I haven’t thought about in more than 8 years.
